Saturday, July 24, 2010

What's with all the dragonflies this year? I live in a dry area (well, it used to be dry; we've gotten a good deal more rain than usual since about last winter). In 16 years, I've hardly seen a dragonfly; now they're all over the place. Especially near water, of course, but even just hanging around Wal-Mart (maybe they're waiting for their car repairs to be finished). I was walking by a museum yesterday and this squadron of dragonflies gave me an escort off the premises.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

The store managed to screw up our entire order for the storm doors and French doors. Actually, the French door measurements were right, but whoever built 'em sent the wrong size. The front storm door turned out to be the wrong kind, and unfortunately the gaffe wasn't noticed until the thing was already installed. And the utility-room storm door somehow fell off our order completely. So we've got one of three doors installed, and that one is wrong. We hope they'll replace that one with the right kind at no additional charge. The storm door we picked for the utility room is a cheap one that's in stock locally and should be installed soon, but the French door, unfortunately, has to be reordered, which means another three weeks of waiting on that. I think the correct front storm door has to be reordered, too.

Anyway, the present front storm door keeps the bugs out and cuts way down on the heat, so that'll be very nice until we get the right one installed.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Please refrain from commenting on my blog posts. You've already driven me to moderating every single comment that comes through, even from NICE people, which is irritating. Nobody who reads my blog will ever see your tatty links to naughty places, because the minute I see Kanji in a Blogger email notification (laden, as always, with links to some damn porn site), BOOM, it's outta there. So kindly shove off.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

...in these two photos. In the first photo, it's green and shaggy and way too tall. It took a lot of hot work to get that monster bush in front of the door cut down to waist height. It's mostly sticks and thorns now, but it'll fill out with leaves eventually. The other bushes weren't near as much work; they had tall shoots, but the main "body" was still a reasonable size.

Tomorrow, the Home Depot guys are coming to install new storm doors on the front and utility-back doors and new French doors in place of the sliding glass doors in the den. We'll be very glad to have good doors up. June bugs and skeeters are getting in through the 2" gap under the old front storm door. The bottom glass pane is missing on the utility-room storm door, so we can't leave the door open for air on nice days. And since the big tree in back was taken down, we've had to tape up black trash bags over the sliding glass doors to keep the sun out. They're ever so attractive, but we're willing to sacrifice them for better insulation. :)

After we get the doors and tree-removal paid off, and save up a few bucks, we're going to call our favorite contractor to put up a patio cover for us.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Apparently, Minnie thought Sammi was so cool for spending the whole night outside in a howling rainstorm, she decided to do it herself last night. It wasn't raining like mad when I let her out through the garage, of course, just sprinkling a little. Toward evening, the rain began (again) in earnest, but despite my calling & calling at front, back, and side of the house, she wouldn't show herself. This morning, I discovered that she did exactly as Sammi did last week--spent the night in the neighbors' shed. The little stinker just hopped over the fence this morning like everything was normal, trotting into the house all covered in cobwebs and dragging an assortment of debris in her coat and soggy tail. Cats....

Saturday, July 3, 2010

...and he's already overstaying his welcome! Our backyard is a lake and, as you can see, Minnie is dismayed at the situation. It rained all day yesterday and, according to the weatherman, it'll probably continue for the next several days. Like lunatics, we went out for breakfast this morning, but decided to curtail our usual trip downtown (into even more flooded regions) and just cut over to Denny's instead. That area was quite sufficiently covered with rainwater for us. We're home for the duration now. Good thing we have lots of puzzles!